


It's Called Surveillance

by For the Record (SakoAkarui)



Series: Animorphs - Tom AU [5]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-15 23:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5804077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SakoAkarui/pseuds/For%20the%20Record





	1. No Smell No Good

Our story begins on a bright Saturday. The sky is clear and crystal blue. Crisp wind carries the laughter of children and the exultation of dogs. I know it was exultation for a fact; I’ve been in a dog’s head. I was yammering right back at them and running around like a crazy ball of adorable fur. I have to hand it to Tom. The dog experience is grade A stuff.

I originally acquired a dog with the intention to sneak into a concert, except halfway there I realized a concert all on my own as a dog wouldn’t be half as much fun as bringing a friend along. And as much as I love our group, I don’t really feel like kicking back to tunes with them, shooting the breeze. Okay, I did invite Ax because THAT would have been fun but he has summarily dubbed all earth music inferior and turned me down. So the concert ended up a no go.

I kept the morph though. I mean, obviously I kept the morph. I don’t even know if we can eject these things. How would that work? Probably best not to think about it too much. But I had this morph and the dog mind is almost drug-like in its ability to brush aside anxieties and fears and paranoia. So I just started using it. You know, like kicking off your shoes and binge-Netflixing. Only as an irish setter and a whole lot more running. Girls love irish setters, you know. They are ladykillers. And that’s me in a nutshell. Well, it’s me in an irish setter but you get the gist.

My general dog haunt is this suburban neighborhood in the well-to-do part of town. It’s not a place on my way to anything, and I didn’t know anyone who lives there, so it was a perfect escape. I’d trot down the street, listen to the girls coo at me and the world of aliens would just float away. I really liked this one girl, Jessica, because she was always happy to see me, and scratched behind my ears just so, and my doggy brain hit ecstasy. Her whole family is pretty cool too. They even set out food and water for me.

Hi, I’m Marco, and that was the story of how I got adopted by a yuppy family. I’m pretty lovable, so I can’t blame them.

So back to the blue sky and yappy dogs. I had accidentally run into Jessica’s brother at the dog park in their part of town, and he’d tried to start a game of fetch. I wasn’t really on about that, but I thought I’d just get it the one time. By which I mean the irish setter brain threw me aside in its complete fixation on the stick. But it was fine, whatever. I mean, I was in the park to enjoy myself, so why not have a game?

The eighth time, the stick landed near this group of picnic tables. Seemed like a large party was hanging out, grilling up hotdogs and laughing it up. This one guy comes up very excited to see me. Squats down, starts scratching in just the right ways. And I should have been over the moon about this, except the dog in me was completely baffled. This thing in front of me - yes thing - did not smell.

Dogs’ smell is kind of a big deal. The Guster family might manage a D in doggy smelling school. Respectable for a human, I suppose. But for a dog, a bit embarrassing. So to have a human-like thing with no smell just threw the dog brain for a complete loop. Oh, he liked the scritches. But he was also confused, which was a complete buzz kill. So instead of having my happy little distraction from reality day, I was having a paranoia spike day. 

Which naturally made my stomach drop into an abyss when I heard Jake’s voice and saw this big sign for the Sharing.


	2. Applebee's

So me and Tom have this thing. It’s like this ritual now, or at least it kind of seems like one I guess. It started maybe a week after Elfangor Died. Possibly three weeks. Hard to count those early days because it all melds together. I’d text Tom, asking if he wanted a bite to eat. Then we’d meet out at this Applebee’s on the other side of town. The Applebee’s was really off the beaten path. They must make their money off of the highway somehow, but the place always feels deserted. Also, meeting there made it less likely we’d be walked in on by anyone we knew. If we were spotted it’d be weird to explain, I think.I mean, he’s not my older brother, he’s my friend’s older brother, and I don’t even hang out with Jake much anymore, because it’s just… creepy.

So I texted Tom and we went to Applebee’s. I kept avoiding the subject which Tom always gets angry about: Jake. I was trying to pretend I’d paid attention to basketball stats when he interrupted me.

“Marco, just tell me whatever you saw or heard, because you are babbling and I’m exhausted as it is.”

“Okay, okay, but I have to ask you to brace yourself. This is bizarre.”

“More bizarre than normal?” Tom asked. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

“Way more bizarre than normal. This is weirder than aliens.”

“You know aliens aren’t weird anymore.” Tom took the last onion flower piece. I let him have it. I’m generous, I guess. Another charm I have.

“Ok, it’s weirder than… than a full night’s sleep.” That made Tom laugh.

“Ok, I’ll bite. What’s weirder than a full night’s sleep?”

“Brace yourself,” I repeated. Repetition is emphasis, or so my English teacher says. “I found a human who did not smell.” Tom stared at me for a very long time it felt like.

“You do realize some people - disgusting people - don’t shower.”

“No, I mean _dogs_ can’t smell him. I was a dog and he had no smell. Tell me that’s not weird.”

“Since when do you have a dog morph?” Tom asked.

“That’s what you choose to focus on?”

“Okay, okay. So he doesn’t smell. That…” Tom looked suddenly thoughtful. “That is actually really bizarre.”

“That’s not the worst of it. He was at this big Sharing picnic.” I didn’t tell him about Jake.

“There was a whole picnic of non-smelling alien Controllers?” Controllers. Our standard word for someone rolled up by the Yeerks. I avoid saying the word. To be honest, it freaks me out.

“No,” I said, trying to think back. “I think he was the only non-smelling one there.”

“So we don’t have an army of these things moving in then.” I threw my hands into the air. Tom just sat back and nodded. Tom has always been a little stoic. I’ve known him for a quite a while. He and Jake had always been very close, and as Jake’s best friend I’d been along as the third wheel. It’s weird, because we’re all in this fight, but the others don’t really know Tom at all. Even Rachel had been a little distant before the war, and she’s his cousin. But I know Tom and this war is tearing him down.

I always thought it was weird, Jake’s relationship with Tom. In TV the older brother is always a jerk. They try to knock their kid brothers down a peg, or lord over them. Tom wasn’t like that. I mean, they joked, called names, but it was never ill spirited. I know Jake looked up to him, wanted to make him proud. At Jake’s eighth birthday, someone clocked me with the bat instead of hitting the piñata. But Tom was there in a split second. I didn’t even hit the ground. Tom was only ten or so then, I guess. And still he was in protection mode. He took care of Jake, and I was Jake’s friend. So Tom took care of me.

It makes this war odd. Tom can’t protect us from war, no matter how much he wants to.

And I’m not Jake.

“I think we need to call a meeting,” he said, and I groaned.

“Nooooooo… meetings lead to missions. Missions lead to fighting. Fighting leads to anger, _which leads to the dark side_.”

“I’m going to pretend I’m cool enough not to get that, because I only watch the new movies. And it’s your own fault. This isn’t like that time you thought the Yeerks programmed cockroaches to invade your house.”

“I didn’t’ think they actually did, I just had a nightmare.”

“You asked me to come and try to catch one,” Tom said. “And I told you you were being paranoid. And then you came back and said the bug spray worked but you threw it out because you don’t want bug spray in your house.” Okay, that last part is true, but it’s poison it has to be a safety hazard or something.

“Okay, yeah, but I have a math test next week.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom said. “We’ll need to find this person, right?”

“Oh, did I forget to say I knew the kid?” I said. “His name’s Erek King. He’s this guy who went to our school but then changed to somewhere else. I checked out his house. It’s completely average American. White picket fence and dogs and everything.”

“So you’ve increased your stalking then.” Tom was smiling though. I think he misses teasing Jake, to be honest. So he takes it all out on me, when I’m the one going all over town just to find out our target is Joe Normal or whatever.

“It’s called surveillance,” I shot back. “It is a key strategy of war.”

“I’m just really floored on this,” Tom said. “What sort of thing doesn’t have a smell? How is that possible?” I shrugged.

“Our science classes don’t go into that much depth on aliens. Best I can give you is how a heart dissection works.” If you haven’t done the heart dissection in class yet, let me warn you. It’s gross and disturbing. Especially if you’ve seen your friend slash through someone’s chest and seen the heart drop out onto the floor, pumping away at air, spewing blood. Which of course was all I was thinking as I’m cutting through to look at its vententacles or whatever they are.

So we chowed down on some burgers. Tom sent out the texts for a meeting. It involved a lot of code words, so it wouldn’t look like we were hanging out too much. Didn’t want to leave a paper trail. Electronic trail. The electronic trail is proving to be far more problematic in this age, I think. But before I get distracted again, the meeting. The day was set for that Thursday after school. I always get a little nervous bringing up stuff with the full group there, like I have to justify my paranoia or something. Which is dumb because no matter what I come with I get chewed out over something.

<Since when do you have a dog morph?> Tobias asked. Like that was the important thing.

“Can we focus on the _actual problem_ for once?” I said.

“I don’t see why we care,” Rachel said. She looked bored, which I expected. She doesn’t really get into the investigative stuff.

<I agree with Marco. This discovery is very important.>

“Thank you, Ax. Thank you for being sensible.”

“But what are we investigating? You said you already stalked him.”

“It’s called _surveillance_ ,” I clarified for the umpteenth time. “Anyway, it’s just too weird. I mean, what kind of creature doesn’t smell? What else can it do? Or, not do… I guess.”

<It may not be a creature at all,> Ax said. <It could be purely mechanical. We faced a similar issue when we attempted to employ mechanical facsimiles of Yeerk enslaved species. We covered it in one of our courses.>

“I thought you said you slept through your courses,” Cassie said with a grin. Ax looked away.

<Well, some, yes, but this one included robots. It was… popular.>

“What were these ‘problems’?” Tom asked. Exhausted looking like normal, but also amused. For my part, I think this just showed once and for all that robots are de facto awesome and everyone across the universe is interested in making a walking, talking android.

<Taxxons,> Ax said. <They have a unique sensory system, which we could never properly research due to their complete alliance with the Yeerks. They immediately noticed the drones. So the entire project was dropped.>

“Are we suggesting that Erek is an android?” I asked. “With fake skin and hair?”

<Either that or a holographic projection. Those were the options we explored. Creating a passable human exterior would likely take time to perfect, time the Yeerks would not have had. It seemed the less viable of the options. A hologram can be updated with ease, and the technology was already well developed. Though they would not have access to that, naturally. I doubt this could be built by Yeerks due to their technological deficiencies.>

“It still doesn’t add up,” Tom said. “We’ll only figure this out if we look deeper. And he’s a known Controller.”’

“Suggesting it _is_ Yeerk technology,” I said. Ax scoffed.

<The Yeerks do _not_ have the capability for such a thing. >

“What else _would_ it be?” Rachel asked.

<Let’s just look into it more,> Tobias said. <I can keep a watch on him, see if anything else will give us a clue. We don’t have any idea right now.> There was a pause. <Also… robots.> If hawks could grin.

“Yeah, alright, fine,” Rachel said. “I’m not going to nerd out over the android angle, but if it _is_ the Yeerks we should probably look into it.”

“You know,” Cassie said, drawing out her vowels. That was her “Cassie Solution” voice. She was about to suggest something crazy and/or creatively brilliant. “You said Taxxon senses could detect the androids, right? So this hologram, it’s probably set to trick human eyes?” Ax nodded.

<At minimum, yes. Any creature tuned to the same wavelengths as humans would be tricked visually. But it may include any number of visual holographic projections.>

“There are plenty of animals that see… differently.” Cassie is the head priestess on cryptic insanity. She wouldn’t tell us more unless we asked. And I didn’t want to, except we really needed to do this. So I bit.

“Okay, what’s our creature of the week then? Just please tell me it’s not an insect. They freak me out.” Cassie smiled.

“I have a few ideas. Give me a day or two, I’ll find something that’ll work.”

“Well we have a possible how. Now we need when and where.”

“Sharing meeting?” Rachel suggested. “If he is one, we’d probably see him there.”

“They have an outing coming up,” Tom said. “Out to the lake for waterskiing or something. Jake’s been… I was invited, but I said no of course.”

“And be _surrounded_ by Yeerks?” I asked. “No way. That’d be stupid.”

“So then what are you suggesting, Mr. Genius?” Rachel said. She of course did not mean it sincerely, despite it’s clearly genuine description of reality.

“If it’s observing, might as well catch him when his guard is down. He’s bound to feel safer in his home. Nice, quiet suburbia. What else would we be asking for?”

“Sure, fine,” Tom said. “Cassie, let us know when you have a candidate. Marco and Ax can go in.”

“What, me?” I asked

“Yeah, you. You found it, so you get to keep investigating it.”

“It’s the rule,” Rachel said in a sing-song voice.

“This is a stupid rule. I want a re-vote.” There would be no re-vote. It’s just Tom’s way of doing things. If he likes one of our ideas, he just steps back and let’s us go at it. I mean, he _supports_ us of course, but you’re still up there, first one to call the shots. I don’t know how he manages when things fall apart, which always happens eventually. That’s when he takes the reins back and I do not envy him. But I also don’t like being in charge where you somehow _drive us_ to things falling apart.

Anyway, I biked my cute booty back to my home, hair flowing in the wind and causing the lovelorn sighs of females in my wake. Home is fairly humble for me. It’s just me and my dad - has been for around two years. I pick up a lot of the slack around the house. My father left work shortly after my mother died and hasn’t found steady employment since. It’s the rotten side of the American Way, but it’s things like this that harden a person’s character. I’m no blissfully ignorant, pampered child. I’m a young adult, capable of cooking and tracking the bills. I’m very mature, and it shows to the female population. After all, they call me ‘cute’. I have electronic evidence. Can’t lose that electronic trail.

Despite my superior cooking ability, I opted for take-out and a night in with homework. I knew in a few days I’d have no time for my normal life. I’d be dedicated to the cause. Which, by the way, makes homework almost a treat nowadays. Which, by the next way, is really depressing.


	3. Surveillance

So before I even got to try out Cassie’s new ingenious plan, Tobias and I nailed the android idea down. And by we nailed, I mean a bus nailed and just kept on driving.

Details, details, I hear you cry. Marco, Marco, master storyteller, give us all the interesting little tidbits! But seriously, keeping watch on someone all the time and piecing the clues together is really boring. I mean REALLY BORING. It’s a lot of time, and flying is great and all, but there’s only so long I can watch little ovals of hair walk around doing basically nothing. There is no way to make that a good story. Guess I’ll have to be brief.

So the bus thing. Apparently Erek has some bully problems because he got cornered by these bigger kids. And Erek made a break for it, and I just assume he was not paying attention. A bus hit him hard and Erek bounced back onto the ground. And like I said, the bus did not stop.

These are the people we’re saving, guys. Bus drivers who can hit a kid and just keep going.

Or he didn’t see Erek, I don’t know, but what **I** saw was a flicker and for a brief moment, Erek wasn’t an oval of hair. He was a basically human shaped thing made of metal, or some other milk-colored plastic.It was just a second and then Erek was just Erek again. Average kid. The bullies ran of course. Guess they didn’t feel like picking on a kid who turns into a metal android thing. Of course this just meant the mission into Erek’s house was suddenly imperative. This lead to us all huddled around looking down at Cassie’s brilliant idea of the week.

If you recall, I specifically told Cassie no insects. This is a fact that cannot be distorted or erased. And she ignored this edict, against all humane methods of business. Because let’s face it, I don’t care about this stupid leg count, body section nonsense. Spiders are insects, and everyone knows it, and that is just the truth. So when Cassie came out with this ‘wolf spider’, I protested. I threw a fit and Rachel mocked me and Ax asked all these stupid questions about the spider. And then I acquired the stupid creepy thing anyway because causes and saving humanity and other stupid things. I’m just THAT dedicated to the cause. You’re welcome.

The plan was pretty simple. Me and Ax would morph these spiders nearby Erek’s place. Tom was going to just walk by the house, with us hitching a ride. We’d veer off at the house and scuttle our creepy hairy butts into the house and hope they didn’t have bug spray around.

Seriously, it has to be illegal to keep that stuff.

The only place we could find to do the morph was around the block. One of their parks had a public bathroom, so we morphed in there. Morphing the wolf spider was awful. It has all these bristly hairs that just burst out all over, and then there’s the extra legs. But the wolf spider mind was ridiculously chill. The wolf spider is not prey. Prey are jumpy and paranoid. I can relate.

But this guy? He was calm. He was cool. He was a predator. And he was hungry.

We’d morphed it for the eyes, which were kind of interesting I guess. They’re apparently good for a spider. But it’s this weird mix between normal eyes and compound. I’d done the fly, so I knew the compound stuff for what it was. But with this spider it was just like the colors had all been twisted and distorted around. That got really disorienting, seeing like normal and seeing in fractal bits. Plus the wolf spider has this thick hairs all over its body that sense, well, everything. I could see every flicker of grass shoots, and the sounds were just vibrations along my back.

So we hitched our ride around the corner. Tom stopped right in front of the house for us. I heard Tom’s voice through the hairs on my back as me and Ax hauled insect butts. Tobias was our man in the sky.

<Okay, bail, and veer right. … No the other way. … Yeah okay>

<Oh, now all is good? What happened to our ride?>

<Just keep going the way your going. Tom has Erek’s dad busy.>

<What are they doing?>

<I’d guess talking about their dog. … That dog is really happy.>

<Well, can’t be surprised about that.> I was happy to know the dog was outside. It had been one of my worries, what to do if that dog got in the spider’s path. We were small, maybe 2 inches or so, but dogs don’t care. I’d actually had a nightmare about that, because I’ve been in a dog’s head. Spider like me would drive dog me crazy.

We clambered up the steps and made for the doggy door. Now the mission was underway, just me and Ax. It’s that moment when you know it’s business. And, fortunately, business this time did not involve Hork-Bajir.

Me and Ax were just wandering a bit at this point. We knew Erek was home, but we didn’t know where to find him. So I went right, Ax went left. We kept checking in as we looked.

<I believe I have inspected this whole room. There are no humans inside. I believe I have come to some stairs leading to the upper level.>

<Yeah, great, no humans here either. You know, for the best eyes of spiders, these are awful. I can’t see across any of these rooms. Tobias? Can you see him anywhere?>

<I see no one through the windows. Sorry.>

<Great,> I said. <I guess Ax can go upstairs. I’ll keep wandering here I guess.> Then every spider hair yelled all at once that something was going down.

<Wait, I think I found -> I started to say, but then things got hectic.

BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK!

That’s what it’s like to be two inches and set upon by a dog. It was at this time I remembered that Erek had two dogs. Dumb me. Also scared me. I ran like nothing else, but I didn’t know where I was going. The dog cornered me, and then there wasn’t much I could do. Eventually my savior arrived, which solved both my problems.

Erek, or what I assumed at the time had to be Erek because who else would it be, pulled his manic dog away and gave me the freedom to split. At that time, though, to my spider eyes, it didn’t seem like Erek at all. Or a person, really. I was getting a good long look at the metal-plastic thing that got slammed by the 82. Through the veneer of a perfectly normal human foot - actually a perfectly normal set of Sketchers - there was a dog-like leg standing high on its toes. Not that it was split into toes. It was just a system of interlocking plates, kind of like chain mail. Thousands and thousands of little steel and ivory triangular scales linked together. They moved seamlessly as Erek crouched in front of his dog. And, more importantly, my spidey senses confirmed that we were indeed in android territory.

<Marco? Are you in distress?> That was Ax. Apparently I’d screamed, or whatever. I was attacked by a dog. That’s very scary when you’re smaller

<Yeah, and I found our boy. Well, not boy.>

Erek was talking to his dog. A terrier, actually, and I realized then I should’ve never stuck to the irish setter. I should’ve gotten a terrier, because ladies go nuts over those little fluff balls. Anyway, he had picked up his dog and was walking away. I followed.

And this is where I did my first really stupid thing. I followed along behind Erek without saying anything at all to Ax. Or Tobias, actually. I just focused on the crazy task of hopping down those basement stairs to keep up with Erek. Why did I even follow him? I’d found out what I needed. I mean, it was all surveillance but there’s a limit and a team.

Man, I’m really dumb sometimes.

So I was hopping down these stairs, not even thinking about the fact that a) I really had no vested interest in what Erek was doing in his basement or more importantly, b) how I even expected to make it back up these stairs. They were just planks where was I gonna crawl up? I’d reached the basement floor and huddled in a corner. And then I heard from pretty far away:

<Marco? I’ve come down the stairs but I cannot find you.>

<Ax, I’m down in the basement.>

<Why do you - … - away?> I think we got a few more handfuls of words before I realized I was talking to myself, just thought-speaking up at the ceiling. Which left spider Marco pretty anxious. Well, the Marco in the spider, not the spider. He was chill. Interested in a beetle and hungry, but not worried. Marco was very worried and very confused. I did not know how I would’ve gotten that far away that fast. Now I know I was in a basement elevator that just drops straight down but hindsight is 20/20 right? Then I was just trying not to panic.

I decided then that my best option was to follow Erek. I mean, if I came this far, might as well figure out what was up. So I just did my best to keep up. Not that I was succeeding, but what else was I going to do? Then I hit grass and just, well, lost it. I was alone, god knows where, and a spider that made me want to vomit when I remembered touching it. I turned around to come out the way I came… and hit a wall. Whatever hallway I was in had disappeared. I spent probably a good ten minutes trying to find a way through before I made my second stupid decision. I demorphed.

I guess I started thinking about how I couldn’t tell time. Tobias got stuck as a hawk because he hid forever looking for a way out. I didn’t trust those spider senses to get me anywhere, and I was NOT becoming a spider forever. I became a hyperventilating human leaning against a blank wall before I even began to process what I was looking at.

A giant, underground, doggy park heaven.


	4. Doggy Heaven

Irish setter Marco would’ve died and ended up right back here. I have to admit, I was simply flabbergasted by the sight. I just stood up and walked forward, looking around like a complete moron. The park was bigger than a football field and its own personal yellow sun shown about a hundred feet overhead. And you know what was going through my mind?

Irish setter Marco needed a better adoptive family.

“Marco?” I turned to look at Erek, who was staring at me like I was a crazy person. Which, I realized with swift dread, was probably accurate. I was dressed in skin-tight athletic clothes, gaping around at a place I definitely did not belong, staring down a known controller.

“It’s a dog park,” I remember saying. “You have a dog park. Under your house. A giant dog park.” That was putting it lightly. This park had streams, and meadows, and perhaps thousands of dogs chasing pretty little butterflies. Oh, and robots. Doggy robots.

Another person, a girl, came running up to me and Erek.

“Hey,” she said. Like we were at a normal dog park. “Did I just see you grow from a spider?”

“Uh… no?” A brilliant response. A classic misdirection.

“Oh… you must be those ‘andalite bandits’,” Erek said, like he’d suddenly figured out some complicated problem and suddenly it all made sense. Erek’s use of air quotes damned our entire group. His grin felt vaguely demeaning. Yes, yes, I messed up, and I am writing this final chapter so you may lament our rightful yet fateful fight for freedom. O, woe! O, tragedy! O, something else probably greek or latin or whatever!

Except not at all. Turns out my blind, courageous - read reckless - adventure worked out in our favor. Funny thing I’ve found about fighting - sometimes you just need to get lucky to get ahead. Which I actually hate, because you can’t depend on luck. But it worked out this time in flying colors.

See, what I had discovered was a slice of nostalgia. Erek was a part of a greater species (can I use species with androids?) from way back before earth even had bacteria. I understand this to be a very long time ago. I, like Ax, am not interested in classes without robots. Anyway, these androids were called the Chee, which meant something in their creators language but I DEFINITELY did not pay attention to that.

And their creators were called Pemalites.

I’m not gonna lie, if I had to pick our alien contact encounter, I’d pick the Pemalites. They were incredibly technologically advanced, but instead of making weapons, they made androids that were as complex as themselves to be new friends. How cool is that? Real artificial intelligence. I mean, it sucked in the end. Their alien contact was from a destructive, hateful species. Think Atila the Hun, but less merciful and more relentless. Yeah. Bad news. They were basically decimated except a handful, who soon died anyway. But their android friends, of course, endured. And through some really really advanced technology, they took the ‘essence’ or whatever of their Pemalite creators and crossed them with wolves making, you guessed it:

Dogs.

And that’s what the park was. It was Chee nostalgia that created it. The Chee that are here now, they’re the same that were here at the founding of the US, during the bubonic plague, when the great Pyramids went up. They’re the ones who watched the Pemalites die, and created dogs. The park was just their way to remember all that good stuff they’d lost. Actually, I find the place really depressing now. I guess for the Chee it’s good to see all the dogs happy and think of their creators, but for me, I just think about how they’re gone, and they are never coming back.

Anyway. Back to our cause and what matters. Erek wasn’t really a controller, because he didn’t have a proper brain for the Yeerk to get at. He just kept the Yeerk in this tiny cage in his head. But it let the Yeerks think he was a controller, and he isn’t the only one. This is why they are basically our greatest asset. The Chee are our intelligence net. They give us information we could never get about the Yeerks ourselves. It was really a home-run, this surveillance mission of mine. Smack, outta the park! We’ve found some other ways for them to help, but there’s a huge limitation. The Pemalites programmed the Chee to be completely nonviolent, to the point that they will let themselves be destroyed before doing harm.

First law of robotics, right?

I sat with Erek under a tree talking about this for some time. I distinctly remember having Erek’s terrier lying on my lap and me scratching his head. It took a while for me to calm down and actually listen to what he was saying. I, stupidly again, forgot completely about everyone else up above ground.

Have I mentioned I’m stupid?

When I did remember, I all but dragged Erek back to his basement elevator. And by that, I mean I pulled on him with my weak human arms, and he just smiled at me all amused at my feeble ape muscles. It took less than five minutes for us to reach his house again. Then it took another few minutes of me running back around the block to the park, still in my stupid skin-tight morphing outfit, only to receive the least friendly welcome of all time. Apparently they thought I had been stepped on, or something. I simultaneously was touched and guilt ridden by their distress. Mostly the guilt part. Well, and the pain part, because Tom had hugged me so tight I lost breath then punched my shoulder all in the span of probably 30 seconds. I am now banned from ever letting anyone think I’m dead because I ran off in the middle of a mission ever again.

I plan to follow that ban to the letter by the way.


	5. And the Other Shoe...

So that was all great, right? I basically slam dunked that mission. Radiant wins, didn’t lose a single tower. I got my neat gun and the cake too. The Chee are great, really. They’ve tipped us off more times than I can count over all this time. But I’ll let you in on a few of the drawbacks. There’s always drawbacks; that’s something you should just accept now. The nonviolence was the main one. We actually tried to fix that, but I’m thinking of the other more important problem. It didn’t seem like one then, but it’s been causing some trouble for us recently.

See, the Pemalites were really advanced. Ridiculously so. If humans progress as fast as the Pemalites did, we’re probably at least centuries, maybe even millennia from androids as good as the Chee. And the Pemalites hadn’t stopped with the Chee. And that was the problem. Bits of Pemalite tech turn up sometimes, and then we have to make sure the Yeerks don’t get it. Which is a HUGE PAIN. It’s one of those missions you can’t afford to mess up, and we are almost always at a disadvantage because the Yeerks just have more people than we do.

I’ll use the first example briefly. This was actually right when I’d met Erek. He and a few of his friends had infiltrated the Sharing with the specific intent of undermining the Yeerks. He was really interested in finding us, so it was just kind of lucky we found each other when we did.

Luck again.

Erek had discovered something pretty awful in the Yeerk arsenal: a Pemalite crystal. Seems like a computer tool to me, because Erek wanted to use it to rewrite his own code. I don’t know how it works, but we all agreed the Yeerks couldn’t have it. Cassie didn’t want Erek to change his programming to allow for violence. I was fine with it, and you know, if Erek wanted to do it, I’d still fully support him. Then I had tried to convince him to change his programming, and part of me still wants to, but I can understand wanting to make your own decision. I don’t like not having control over my life. I can at least now understand his aversion to giving up that last remnant of Pemalite kindness in his code. The Chee can never lose that.

So the Yeerks had the super crystal. We pitiful humans had to take it from them. And we figured out a perfect way to Black Widow through their mess of laser beam defensives: bats. Really useful morph, that. And then we just… You know, I can’t talk about the second half of that. I just… It’s not even about me on death’s door, I just think of my friends and… well, you’re not gonna hear it.

But that wasn’t the only one. Because, sure, they have a dog park under our town, but Erek built pyramids, right? You think they didn’t make dog parks there? I’m not really sure how many Chee there are, but it’s clear they’ve been all over. And unfortunately? They brought their tech with them.

So okay, let’s go to my favorite example of tracking Pemalite technology, which was actually relatively recent. Still feels like forever ago, of course. Erek, our direct contact on this intelligence ring, came by sort of sheepishly as I was playing at the arcade. I know arcades are a bit out of vogue but it’s nice to get out sometimes for a game or two, have real people about while you play. Anyway, Erek comes up and I know it’s bad news. We had a situation in Ireland. At first you’d be like, hell yeah! I get to see Ireland!

Wrong. You have to get to Ireland. And we are poor as poor.

I forget what the tech was. It wasn’t a crystal. We just had to destroy the thing, which is our speciality. But getting there…

So travel has a couple choices, over oceans. First, obviously, is airplane. Except we can’t afford seats, and the flights are disgustingly longer than 2 hours. That much morphing and demorphing would’ve killed us. Normally we try to use our morphing to our advantage and just become dolphins or whatever, but did I mention crossing an OCEAN?

So we did the crazy thing. The Chee had Erek arrange with a Chee trucker to get us there, then another on the coast who needed a few ‘hands on deck’.

Do not be a hand on deck.

It was work. Real work. I was in the pantry, so the hours were ungodly, and all the cleaning and…

We need a Chee to get us free airfare. How are they not in that business? They’ll pretend to be us but they won’t become flight attendants? Rude much?

Anyway, Ireland. I have to admit, that was something. I’ve been to Ireland. I can knock that off my list. I don’t have a list, because I’d be a little upset thinking of all the things I’d never get to do when things go sour. But I can make a list of things I already checked off. So now I have Ireland, and worked on a boat.

The four of us just stepped off the ship in awe. (Sadly, Ax and Tobias stayed behind. It’d be a lot of morphing and hiding getting them across the Atlantic.) The four of us had back packs with some supplies, but we weren’t too worried about that. What we really needed was to find our Yeerks and bust up their operation.

Hilariously, read fortunately, it turns out that our town is home base for the Yeerks - how convenient, yeah? There was just a small crew out in Ireland looking for this artifact. Erek said they had found its general area with something tech like that sounded like radar to me, but they didn’t know for sure what it was. I think… I’m really sure it was something that would help with cloaking. It might have been a decrepit version of Erek’s hologram program. Can you imagine that in Yeerk hands? Bad news bears.

So our job was pretty simple once we got there. (Hahaha simple…) Find Yeerks, break everything. We’re really good at those missions. You seen an elephant out for fun? Great times.

Took some time to find them, of course, even though we knew the general vicinity. We took turns going up as birds. In the meantime… I mean, how often do you get to go to Ireland? We saw the sites. I may have snuck into a pub with Rachel while Tom and Cassie flew surveillance. That’s the most I’ll say on that matter. We saw some really cool old buildings that apparently were graves. And eventually, yeah, we found the Yeerks.

What gave them away was the bug fighter “hidden” under some trees. I’m pretty sure most of those can cloak, so I knew this had to be the reject soldiers. Someone hated these guys. They had the crummy broken ship and were stuck in what they thought was backwoods earth.

Stupid aliens.

The Taxxons were the ones at work. They chewed through dirt like nothing else, digging relentlessly down and down. A handful of humans stood around. One was smoking. They looked bored, which was dumb. Why would you go to Ireland and be bored? They had human brains to tap into and get excited.

This job, being a fallout from Erek’s information, fell to me. A lot of things Erek comes and tells us about become my mission for some reason. So it was my call on what to do.

“We let the Taxxons dig it up, then play Michael Bay on them,” I declared.

“Wait, you want to _let them_ find this technology? I thought that was the bad thing.” I shook my head.

“No, that’s not it at all. The thing we need to do is destroy it. If they don’t dig it out, we have to. So, let them bring it up, and then take them out. Smash smash to the tech and bob’s your uncle.”

“I’ve been here just long enough to feel like this is _really_ the wrong country for that phrase,” Rachel said.

“It’s a good plan though,” Tom said, his arms crossed. Ireland suited Tom well. He didn’t look so sickly pale. We went in a church or two, which the rest of us hadn’t felt too driven about, but Tom definitely found some solace there. And some of the churches had some cool things to look at, too.

But our plan. Business business business. Numbers. There were four humans, and a bunch of Taxxons. I didn’t count because they gross me out. Plus, they weren’t the problem.

“Okay, so this bug fighter…”

“Yeah… Ax would be really useful now…”

“I mean, if it just got wrecked, that’d be enough, right?” Classic Rachel. Also, a good plan.

“Smash and grab, I like it,” I said with a grin.

“Um… Should I mention that those ships have pretty tough exteriors?” Cassie said.

“But not _interiors_ ,” I said. “Destroy the control panel and our little controllers are stranded.”

“I like it,” Rachel said. This always means the plan is stupid, but apparently Ireland made me too optimistic.

“And then?” Tom asked. He raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

“We can take out a swarm of Taxxons. And just… I don’t know, knock out the humans? Maybe they’ll just run away…”

“Am I on the ship, or the Taxxons?” Rachel asked, even though Cassie was staring at me.

“We’d be stranding them here,” Cassie said. “Completely cut off.”

“So? The Yeerks die and the humans are free.”

“And if they fight back? I’ve seen the dracon beams in their hands.”

“We knock them out,” Tom said with a shrug. No one was smiling anymore. “We have to choose the right morphs and go for it, just as they get the piece out.”

This led to a decision that I did _not_ make, despite my ‘authority’ on the mission. It was decided that Rachel was best suited to Taxxon stomping and tossing people unconscious. That left the strength position to me. So I needed to get inside the ship, ready to destroy just as our attack hit.

Fortunately it only took another day after we found them for them to get to the artifact. They started working carefully to extract it while I went fly and went up to their ship. Insect morph really was the best way to get inside unseen. I was happy I wouldn’t be staying in morph that long — we rely on Ax to keep track of time.

I’m really happy I went fly, because those eyes picked up a wall of color I never would have. A barrier. Something set up to keep insects out. I should’ve thought of it myself, to be honest.

<So, uh, how distracted are they?> I asked the team.

<Pretty distracted,> Rachel replied. She had morphed behind the bug fighter, but I’d already heard her charge ahead. I landed on the ground and did yet another stupid thing - I demorphed.

This was extremely dangerous. I was demorphing under scant cover in front of known controllers. I was quite possibly blowing our cover. If a controller saw me and escaped, somehow got picked up again… But damn I wanted in that ship. And if human controllers could get through, I had a guess I could, too.

The Yeerks _were_ really distracted. I saw humans yelling directions, and the top of an elephant stomping within the deep hole. There was a seared wound over its ear. No one was even glancing my way as I ran into the bug fighter.

My first thought was, oh sweet Samus, if we could steal this ship. I knew we couldn’t. No one had the expertise for that. But a ship would benefit us greatly. Have I mentioned yet how much Ax helps on missions? I should buy him a gift basket or something.

But the ship. If I couldn’t take it, at least I could enjoy slamming my gorilla fists into the consoles.

Morphing twice in a row is exhausting, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I was tired, but rippling with muscles by the time I finished. It was child’s play to smash everything to pieces.

<Fighter going down. Hope you all are keeping up out there.> A panicked scream assured me of the continued fight. I could imagine an elephant squishing the Taxxons. I didn’t know what Tom and Cassie had gone with, morph-wise. But that wasn’t my job. My job was to be as thorough as possible to make the ship unusable.

I didn’t just throw fists into everything — though I did that too. I also ripped open the consoles and tore out every wire I could find. I wanted a technician’s nightmare, and I feel assured I made it. I turned to join the fight.

And then I got a shock. Literally.

The field over the entrance apparently wasn’t just for insects. Fortunately only my hand and knee had hit the barrier. I fell backwards in surprise and hit the ground hard. I didn’t want to know what would have happened if I fell entirely into that field.

<Um… so remember how we always have problems?>

<Please tell me you disabled the ship,> Tom said. His voice halted, the way it does whenever he’s trying to do two things at once. The other task, of course, was fighting.

<Fighter down. Gorilla down. They’ve got something over the door.> Tom cursed, something that had shocked me early in the war. Now it just solidified the severity of the situation.

<Can you morph out?>

<Hm?> I said. I wondered why Tom didn’t even bring up the danger of showing our human form. I was also vaguely aware at the time that the numbness in my hand was moving up my arm, already engulfing my wrist.

<Can you morph out, Marco?> I tried, but it was hard to think straight.

<Trying that. Not going well…>

<Okay. Okay, just… hold on. We’re coming in to get you.> I was happy to hear that, because thatmeant they were almost done out there. Mission accomplished. Nothing to worry about; we had endless time to solve this problem. I could wait. At that time I hadn’t even thought about the two hour limit. I just felt really relaxed, like everything was going to be just fine.

I don’t know how long I waited, but I remember my entire arm and most of my lower body was numb, and it was hard to keep my eyes open. Oh, and someone was striking my cheek.

“Marco? Marco, can you hear me?”

<Why are you hitting me, Cassie?> She was the nice one.

“Marco, you need to stay awake.” That was Tom. I looked around. Cassie was hunched over me, her hand at my neck. Tom was to my other side, and Rachel was behind him. She looked worried, which scared me.

It woke me up a little.

“Cassie, what do we do?” Tom asked. She shook her head.

“I don’t really know. Marco? Tell me what you’re feeling. What is it doing to the gorilla body?”

<I’m really numb,> I said. It was nice that I only had to think the thoughts. <My hand was numb, and my leg, but its been spreading.> I closed my eyes again. And I was rewarded with another strike to my face.

“You can’t sleep, Marco,” Cassie said. She looked at Tom. “It has to be nerves. It’s going through his nervous system, and there’s nothing I can do about that.” Tom rubbed his hands over his face, the way he does when he’s thinking too hard about something.

“But it didn’t work on us, right? It didn’t work on humans,” Rachel said. “If he could go back to human, maybe it wouldn’t do anything, because it didn’t work on us at all.”

“It didn’t work on us!” Tom cried. He turned back to me and shook me as much as a human can shake a gorilla.

“Marco, concentrate. Concentrate really hard. Remember, you almost got stuck in morph before, right? But you thought really hard, and you came out fine.”

I did remember that. I almost got stuck as a cockroach. That was actually a recurring nightmare of mine, so I remembered it really well.

“That’s right, Marco. Think of you. Talk to me, tell me your name,” Cassie said. It took me a moment, but I responded.

“And where do you live? Where’s your house?” Cassie went on and on with the questions, each another little piece of who I knew I was. I didn’t even realize I had demorphed until Rachel cut me off.

“Ok, Marco, you’re fine, so you can stop explaining how that game works.”

“What?” My mind began to clear and I sat up. I had human legs and hands and…

No morphing suit. I’d apparently been too out of it to get that part in. A sweater lay over me. I tried not to think about the blood on it.

“We should move,” Tom said. “Can you move?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can move.”

We had our backpacks with our clothes, so once we’d flown back I didn’t have to sit around embarrassed for myself. Actually, the longer I get into this retelling, the more I realize this shouldn’t be my favorite example. I’d been thinking about all the Ireland stuff. Feels separate for me, weirdly enough. What happened to those controllers, that happened in the war. And Ireland, well, it wasn’t in the war to me. And I guess it should be my favorite, since we were so successful at our task. Erek confirmed later that the Yeerks followed up only to find a disaster zone. We’d taken the remnants of the Pemalite artifact and thrown them into the ocean. All in all, success right?

Still had to work in that horrid pantry on the way home.


	6. Wrapping it up

I feel I should wrap this up somehow. I’m not even sure what to say. Everyone else has had a word in. Well, except Ax. He says he doesn’t want to intrude into this human endeavor. We’ll get him around though. I think you’ll like him. He’s too serious, but he’s a cool guy. Actually, he’s far too serious. Like, I’m going to be a pain because it’s my responsibility to blah blah blah but he really just wants to sit back and be cool. You’ll see.

I guess my wrap up is, yes, we are warning you because Earth is in dire need of help. You are stuck behind a handful of teens to protect you, and let’s face it, you don’t trust teens. I know you won’t join our fight — that’d be far to dangerous — but at least don’t join the enemy. Remember that being a part of “something bigger” isn’t the thing you want. You want to be you. You want to be you with all the other people who want to be them and do things with you being you, and them being them, with all the choices and opportunities and freedom that comes with that.

And maybe pray for our survival. It can’t hurt, and I’m not religious, but we really need it.


End file.
